Wind Turbines and TV Reception: Well, this stinks....

[primestar31]

Wind, solar power crucial in Midland's energized future

As the country as a whole slowly but steadily moves toward a more efficient and...

www.ourmidland.com

They are going to construct a 77-count wind turbine farm BETWEEN us and ALL our local tv station towers. This will be around 14-15 miles away. ALL my towers are in an arc, North-East to South from 35-55 miles. There's NO WAY I can aim past these turbines when built, I'll be aiming right through the middle of this monstrosity. That's likely going to cause all sorts of issues with my OTA tv reception. They've been fighting this out for years and finally got approval to build it, because some of the local government people OWN the land they'll build these on...

 

[TRG]

Wind, solar power crucial in Midland's energized future

As the country as a whole slowly but steadily moves toward a more efficient and...

www.ourmidland.com

They are going to construct a 77-count wind turbine farm BETWEEN us and ALL our local tv station towers. There's NO WAY I can aim past them, I'll be aiming right through the middle of this monstrosity. That's likely going to cause all sorts of issues with my OTA tv reception. They've been fighting this out for years, and finally got approval to build it, because some of the local government people OWN the land they'll build these on...

That site has a pay wall but I get the gist of it from your description. How far away from the towers are you? If you are close enough it might not be an issue. Also, if the station antenna towers are high enough to clear the top of the wind generators you might be OK.

If the wind generators cause interference of the signal maybe the local government will pony up and give you free satellite TV with your locals. Yeah right!

Fingers crossed and wait/see I guess. Good luck.

 

[primestar31]

That site has a pay wall but I get the gist of it from your description. How far away from the towers are you? If you are close enough it might not be an issue. Also, if the station antenna towers are high enough to clear the top of the wind generators you might be OK.

If the wind generators cause interference of the signal maybe the local government will pony up and give you free satellite TV with your locals. Yeah right!

Fingers crossed and wait/see I guess. Good luck.

Huh, it doesn't have a paywall for me, and I'm not paying them. Wait, the paywall may ONLY be on mobile phones. I'm using a laptop.

Anyway, see the update I made above for a bit more info, and that answers your questions.

 

[TRG]

Huh, it doesn't have a paywall for me, and I'm not paying them. Wait, the paywall may ONLY be on mobile phones. I'm using a laptop.

Anyway, see the update I made above for a bit more info, and that answers your questions.

Yup, that's going to be a problem for sure.

BTW this is what I get when I click that link on my Desktop computer. I can't get rid of the popup window. Clicking "back home" leaves that article and brings me to their home page.

 

[primestar31]

I'm running Firefox on Windows 10, and uBlock Origin. Maybe uBlock blocks that? Not sure, but I've never seen it.

 

[rabbit73]

I also get a paywall with my Windows 10 laptop that has Firefox and AdblockPlus. Anyway, I get the point: for you, wind turbines stink.

Many years ago I read about a wind farm in the midwest that had a contract that required the power company to compensate any viewer that had reception problems caused by the turbines. I can't find the article now.

I wonder if ATSC 3.0 will handle the problem any better.

I wonder if FTA would work for you?

 

[comfortably_numb]

I wonder if FTA would work for you?

He already does FTA

 

[primestar31]

I also get a paywall with my Windows 10 laptop that has Firefox and AdblockPlus. Anyway, I get the point: for you, wind turbines stink.

Many years ago I read about a wind farm in the midwest that had a contract that required the power company to compensate any viewer that had reception problems caused by the turbines. I can't find the article now.

I wonder if ATSC 3.0 will handle the problem any better.

I wonder if FTA would work for you?

Yes, I already do that. However, I also like my OTA channels. 90% of my viewing is on sub-channels.

 

[TRG]

I feel spoiled with my OTA towers about 10 miles away on a mountain top that's around 10,200 feet high. I can use a paper clip and get a good signal.

 

[TheKrell]

I see a lot of reports of wind farms blocking OTA TV. But those big blades are all made of composite material and don't cover much area (out of the full diameter of their spin). The towers are steel, but they are vertical and TV is horizontally polarized. I wonder what the mechanism of said interference is.

 

[TRG]

I see a lot of reports of wind farms blocking OTA TV. But those big blades are all made of composite material and don't cover much area (out of the full diameter of their spin). The towers are steel, but they are vertical and TV is horizontally polarized. I wonder what the mechanism of said interference is.

Most likely multipath.

Multipath propagation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[907TECH]

I do not expect we would see many problems with OTA reception, as caused by wind farms. Especially at that distance from you. Could be wrong.... I fully support wind power but NIMBY comes into play. And if the turbines do cause multipath, well so does many other types of structures. ATSC 3.0 may help.

 

[N5XZS]

I wonder if the stations were to use circular polarization if the winds towers were very common?

Would that resolve the problem?

 

[primestar31]

I do not expect we would see many problems with OTA reception, as caused by wind farms. Especially at that distance from you. Could be wrong.... I fully support wind power but NIMBY comes into play.

Nope, I only care if they screw up my OTA reception, which has been reported to happen all over the news with other wind farms. IF that doesn't happen, GOOD but if it does, I won't be happy.

 

[navychop]

Well, you’ll have fewer birds and fewer endangered species birds....

And nobody will want to live near them, due to vibrations.

Sigh. Maybe if they painted one blade black.

 

[Tower Guy]

But those big blades are all made of composite material and don't cover much area (out of the full diameter of their spin). ...... I wonder what the mechanism of said interference is.

The fiberglass blades have a large braided copper wire running through them in order to drain off static electricity.

The TV signal is reflected by the copper wire, and multipath occurs. The multipath changes while the blades turn, but the multipath elimination circuits in the decoder chips are not designed to deal with variable multipath.

ATSC 3.0 is not bothered too much by multipath, so that should work OK, but I don’t know when Nextgen is coming to rural MI.

 

[TheKrell]

Nope, I only care if they screw up my OTA reception, which has been reported to happen all over the news with other wind farms. IF that doesn't happen, GOOD but if it does, I won't be happy.

Is Locast a solution for you?

 

[TheKrell]

The fiberglass blades have a large braided copper wire running through them in order to drain off static electricity.

How large is "large"?

 

[primestar31]

Is Locast a solution for you?

No, it's not available in my DMA.

 

[solarvic]

What burns my - - - is the way our government is subsidized the money to China for building them. GE bought all the equipment from that company in California that went bankrupt and cheated thier employees out of thier money. Ge tryed a couple foundrys to make the castings and they couldn,t pass the metulurgy standards. GE tryed the Hodge foundry in Greenville PA. and we could meet the standards. Hodge went thru a learning curve with the casting process till we got preety good and Ge kept squeezing the price down even though the alloy prices were triple what they cost when we started. So they went to China to get thier parts and still collected the Government subsidy. I feel that if our government is going to pay a subsidy that the product should be built in our country that pays them.